Many companies go public, first and foremost, for the money. They have figured out what they’re going to do with it — pay off debt, fund new marketing efforts or expansion, develop new technologies.

But for Boston-based online backup firm Carbonite Inc., prestige may have been more important than the dough.

Months after the IPO, Carbonite still has the $56 million in net proceeds raised in the offering. In an interview, CEO David Friend said he’s “hopeful that we will find something that will make sense” for the cash — probably acquisitions.

Except, the company has no one obvious to acquire. The only other major player in the online consumer backup space is Mozy, owned by Hopkinton’s EMC Corp.

“Right now (the cash) is just sitting there, and it’s working capital,” Friend said. “Something will come along. I don’t know what it’s going to be yet.”

Friend said he can foresee offering add-on services for Carbonite customers, who pay rates starting at $59 a year for unlimited online backup.

Bhavan Suri, an analyst with William Blair & Company, said Carbonite might, for instance, acquire a company that optimizes storage backup for iPads, or an advanced file compression technology.

Rather than money for acquisitions, Carbonite saw going public as crucial for its branding efforts, Friend said. “Now we don’t have anyone saying, ‘Oh you don’t want to do business with Carbonite. They’re just a little bitty company.’ ’’

The emphasis on bolstering a high-profile brand helps to explain why Carbonite opted to go forward with its IPO even under miserable market conditions that caused a number of other IPO hopefuls to drop out. Carbonite priced shares on Aug. 10, a day when the Nasdaq Composite Index plunged 4 percent; the shares priced at $10 each — far below the original plan, to sell shares at between $15 to $17 a piece. (Shares were trading at $12 as of earlier this week.)

Branding is so critical to Carbonite because the company is trying to do something often seen in the tech business world as difficult — sell a tech service to non-technologically-inclined computer owners.

While the company has managed to surpass the 1 million mark in terms of consumer customers, that’s a tiny fraction of the 175 million computers that could be backed up in the U.S. alone, Friend said.

Carbonite spends about $25 million a year on marketing and advertising — TV, radio, print — and has expanded into doing enterprise backup as well. But consumer remains its bread-and-butter, and what will fuel exponential growth at the company, Friend said. The company employs 335 overall, including 188 at its Back Bay headquarters.

“There’s no reason why we can’t get to be 10 times, 20 times, 50 times the size we’re at today,” he said. For the first three quarters of the year, Carbonite saw $43 million in revenue and had a net loss of $17 million (which Friend said should turn into a profit as time goes on and people renew their subscriptions).

As far as the time-frame on that, Suri expects the company could grow to four or five million customers within two to three years.

As Carbonite grows, the company will increasingly be an acquisition target itself, he said.

“If they hit 20 million users, I suspect they get acquired,” Suri said.

Among the tech players that might get interested in Carbonite down the line — Google, Symantec or even EMC, he said.

Friend said the main key to Carbonite’s growth at this point will be to just continue its marketing push. “We’ve got a well-oiled machine now where we can pretty reliably put a dollar of marketing in the top, turn the crank, and get a big multiple out of the bottom in terms of customer lifetime value,” he said.

Friend said it will be a while before Carbonite would opt to slow down its marketing and enjoy the fruits of its efforts — in the form of profitability.

“At some point you have a half-billion-dollar business and you can turn the marketing down, slow your growth down,” he said. “And that just throws off huge amounts of cash for years and years. Because our customers don’t leave. They install Carbonite, and they like it, and they stick around.”

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